Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
With Dr Rex Rogers

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Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 06 April 2013

Contemporary culture seems bent upon finding ways to embrace, even promote, ideas, attitudes, values, and practices earlier cultures considered lacking in common sense. Indeed in much of this it seems contemporary culture is, in sum, a celebration of irrationality.

Some of these relatively recently embraced ways of life (culture) are irreverent, some are immoral, and some at one time were illegal. I say recently embraced, but there are really no new practices under the sun, just old ones recycled (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Of course, what you call irreverent, immoral, or illegal depends upon your point of view, which in turn depends upon your worldview. What you believe about God, life, and truth influences what ideas, attitudes, values, and practices you embrace as legitimate. This is a prime reason contemporary culture celebrates irrationality. It does so because the current cultural zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, has jettisoned the idea of moral absolutes in favor of a new, ironically, "absolute" called moral relativism.

The existence of ultimate truth is rejected. And the existence of clearly knowable, objectively established truth is rejected. In their place contemporary culture enshrines “There is no truth” or “What’s true for you may not be true for me,” so people believe and do whatever they want. Consequently, since we can know nothing for sure, we cannot believe anything for sure. If we can know nothing and can believe nothing for sure, what we believe, and therefore what we do, doesn’t matter, at least not to anyone but us.

A culture that does not believe in objective truth, i.e. objectivity, is vulnerable, nay, is wide open, to subjective "truth," i.e. subjectivity. In other words, if we don’t believe truth is determined outside of us than it must be OK to determine it within us. We do what’s right in our own eyes.

This approach to what’s right pretty much lets us determine what to do based upon personal experience, not based upon the Bible, the Church, religion, or even history. So if we want to get an abortion, why not? If we want to say heterosexual expression outside marriage or homosexual expression is morally acceptable, why not? If we want to believe life began by chance and that human beings are descended from apes, why not? If we want to spend not only beyond our means but spend other peoples’ means (our children and grandchildren), why not? There’s no piper to be paid, no reckoning. It’s all just going to work out…somehow.

To state what should be obvious, celebrating irrationality is not rational. Our culture cannot sustain itself indefinitely with this kind of pell-mell rush to senselessness. Yet lemming-like, we keep running toward the cliff.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 20 March 2013

Evolutionary theory, the idea that life began by chance and proceeded through natural selection toward some higher order, has long since gone mainstream in American culture. Gambling, games of chance, has also taken the culture by storm, more recently but just as thoroughly. While one didn’t cause the other the relationship is nevertheless interesting.

Evolutionary theory’s story has a long arc, but the tipping point came in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life and 1871 with The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Evolutionary theory quickly gained recognition as the dominant paradigm in the biological sciences and many other fields of intellectual and social endeavor. Evolutionary theory, evolution for short, remains the accepted scientific if not social metanarrative today.

Nevada legalized commercial gambling in 1931 and Atlantic City in 1979. Other than a few racetracks that was it: two states with legal commercial or casino gambling. While reintroduction of state lotteries in the 1960s and 1970s set off a “third wave” of gambling in the United States, gambling hit critical mass with the passage of the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. Now, only two states remain in which commercial gambling is still illegal: Hawaii and Utah.

Evolutionary theory roots its interpretation of the world in closed-order naturalism. It assumes away the need, then the existence, of a Sovereign Creator God, i.e., replaces intentional divine creation design with chance. While there are many ideas about how this chance works, in the end, it’s just biological happenstance that somehow always moves species toward higher, more complex, and, mysteriously, better organisms. In the case of humankind, begin with protoplasm, become self-aware intelligent human beings.

At its core, gambling, or gaming as it’s now called, encourages people to suspend their faculties in favor of chance, luck, fate, or the “gambling gods.” In this way, gambling at its core is a celebration of irrationality (the “House” or gambling operation owners always work with an “edge”—They’re the only ones in the gambling process who aren’t gambling). Gamblers know this, saying, “You can win a race but you can’t beat the races.” Ultimately, gambling is largely an experience in futility, a vehicle for entrusting ones resources and perhaps future to chance.

In a culture that embraces the idea that life begins by chance is it any wonder that gambling has been enthusiastically adopted as both (harmless?) entertainment and a (harmless?) source of government revenue? As I said, one didn’t cause the other, but the philosophic outlook is neatly aligned.

It isn’t much of a stretch to jump from the idea life began by chance to the idea life is just a gamble, that nothing rational let alone moral guides life, and ultimately nothing invests life with meaning. Evolutionary theory and gambling share a “faith,”—and that is what it is—in chance detached from God and meaning.

If life is meaningless it must be “morality-less.” There are no objective standards, no absolute values, just moral relativism. It therefore doesn’t matter what a person does, much less who he or she is. We know what we want to do, when we want to do it, with whom we want to do it, and why doesn’t matter. We can do what is right in our own eyes because “what is right” is (objectively) assumed out of the equation.

This is what we now think of the human condition. We may be higher order animals but ultimately we’re just animals, ethically as well as biologically. Life is just a crapshoot. It’s just chance.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 19 March 2013

Ohio Senator Rob Portman recently announced his support for same-sex marriage. Why he adopted this view is more interesting than the fact he is the first Republican in the United States Senate to publicly do so.

The Senator recently learned his now 21-year-old son is gay. “Knowing that my son is gay,” the Senator said, “prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective.”

In another public announcement recently Mr. Rob Bell, former pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the author of the controversial Love Wins, told an audience in San Francisco that he now endorses same-sex marriage. He justified his position by saying, “I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.”

So twice in a month notable leaders claim love is the reason they now endorse same-sex marriage. According to Senator Portman and Mr. Bell, love explains their dramatic change of heart. Apparently for them, in the words of the Beatles, “Love is all you need.” But is it?

A few years ago when I was serving as the president of a Christian university, a gay rights group called Soulforce demanded entrance to classrooms and chapel. I simply said, “No thank you.” The university did not verbally condemn the young people comprising the group nor did it criticize other Christian institutions that chose to give Soulforce campus access. We just decided to go a different direction.

I received more mail on this decision than any other in which I was involved during my nearly seventeen years as the university president. More than 90% of this mail supported my decision and lauded the university for the stand it took. About 10% or less of the mail on this issue criticized my decision. What interested me most is that of those who disagreed with me nearly all pointed to a loved one, brother, sister, uncle, or dear friend who was gay and that this love changed their mind about the moral legitimacy of homosexuality. In other words, love was their justification for their view.

Since that time I have time and again noted this link. Indeed when a news channel promoted a “teaser” stating the Senator had changed his position, I said to my wife, “I’m guessing his daughter has come out.” I was wrong: his son had come out.

Love is a wonderful human emotion and expression, but love for the wrong things does not make them good, right, or morally defensible.

If a person says he loves to have sex with little children his actions are not made right or righteous by his love. If a sadist loves to hurt people the love for harming others does not make the action right or moral.

After the Civil War had concluded, John Wilkes Booth’s love for the Confederacy led him to kill a President, and of course his action was immoral. It was still murder.

If a person loves to lie, cheat, or steal, these actions do not become good or right bathed in love. If people pursue sexual intimacy with someone not their spouse, because they love the other person, the adultery is not legitimized.

Love for an action or behavior does not determine its morality. What God says about the action or behavior defines its morality. The reason: love is a choice emerging from human hearts born in and tainted by sin. Love is therefore not always a trustworthy guide to moral considerations. Only God’s Word, the God who is Love in its righteous form, provides a trustworthy guide.

I understand Senator and Mrs. Portman’s love for their son, a love they should maintain no matter what he does or who he says he has become. But their love does not make his same-sex behavior good, right, or moral.

I have less empathy for Mr. Bell, who knows better and who is turning his back on his evangelical roots. Sadly, he claims to be expressing his unbiblical affirmation of same-sex marriage in the name of a better understanding of the Christian faith. His desire to express love is admirable, but it is a love based upon a false interpretation of the Bible. His viewpoint is wrong, not because I said so but because God in his Word says so, and Mr. Bell’s love does not change this truth.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 18 March 2013

We learned this week that doctors in China have performed some 336 million known abortions since 1971 when the government first attempted to limit the size of families. I say “known” abortions because this astronomical figure does not include so-called “missing” abortions, those surreptitiously conducted by couples on their own. The total exceeds the population of all but two nations of the world: China and India.

China’s hideous and heinous abortion record involves the infamous one-child policy instituted in 1979, required abortions, forced sterilizations, and other birth control procedures impressed upon women in violation of their human rights. Lest we be smug, note that the abortion tally in the United States now stands at more than 50 million since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

If you believe, as I do, that abortion of a human fetus takes the life of not simply animate tissue or protoplasm but a unique human person, than you must regard these numbers as stratospheric immorality. This systematic infanticide dwarfs other mass murders in history, e.g. 50-75 million by China’s Mao Ze Dong, 12 million estimated in the Holocaust, 8 million in the Congo, 6 million in the gulags by Stalin. The human tragedy in all these horrific figures is beyond comprehension. Each number within these statistics represents one human being, made in the image of God, loved by God, a person eternally valuable and significant.

Abortion of this magnitude cannot but negatively affect the cultures and societies that experience it, whether dictated to a people by autocratic regimes or embraced by a people with euphemisms like “choice” in the name of sexual freedom. So many abortions have been conducted in China that even a nation of 1.3 billion people (or 315 million in the US) is now aging at a pace that’s undermining economic growth and general wellbeing. In addition, China suffers an enormous “marriage problem” because hundreds of thousands of young men in their 20s and 30s cannot find sufficient numbers of young women to become their wives (in a culture that values male children, the “one-child” is often a boy). This in turn is contributing to higher rates of crime, homosexuality, and other social problems.

Abortion is a form of killing or murder. It always has been and no cloaked phrase can hide this fact. It is as illogical as it is irrational. This is evidenced regularly when entertainment stars, many who support so-called pro-choice, appear on late night talk shows to proclaim their pregnancy and talk about “the baby.” The only difference in their expected baby and another aborted fetus is the first is wanted by the parent(s) and the latter is not. This is supposedly the “choice” involved. But whether an adult calls an embryo a baby or a (apparently not-human) fetus doesn’t change its essence. It is what it is, a unique human person whose life should be protected in the name of all that’s moral, right, and good. Governments, cultures, or societies that ignore this truth do not escape unscathed. They pay a price we may yet not fully understand.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues

and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 16 March 2013

Pope Francis is garnering early accolades for his perceived humility, which, oddly, reminds me of President Jimmy Carter.

Pope Francis’s humble heart, observers say, was quickly demonstrated by his decision to eschew a limousine for a shuttle bus ride with the cardinals, his choice to carry his own luggage, and the fact he settled his own lodging bill. All this, people believe, is evidence of Pope Francis’s authenticity, his man-of-the-people persona.

When Jimmy Carter ran for President in 1976 he was frequently photographed carrying his own suit bag. After the election, he continued this practice, suspended the traditional playing of “Hail to the Chief,” and conducted fireside chats dressed in cardigan sweaters. He also greatly reduced the perks of the White House staff and sold two presidential yachts. All this was to counter the so-called “Imperial Presidency” of both Richard M. Nixon and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

What’s more than interesting about this story is that it wasn’t long before President Carter stopped carrying his bags and discarded the cardigans. And “Hail to the Chief” made a comeback too, in part because Carter’s decision to stop the Marine Band from playing the song caused a public outcry, and in part because Carter needed it. As his presidency progressed from one crisis to the next—Iran Hostages, Afghanistan, Inflation—“Malaise”—Panama Canal—the Carter Administration was increasingly considered a failure, or at best embarrassingly inept. What to do? Ditch the humility symbols and get back to pomp and ceremony in an effort to restore an aura of power and effectiveness.

Some papacy observers within and without the Catholic Church hope Pope Francis’s early actions on “small matters” signal a change of philosophy and perhaps approach to management that will hold church bureaucrats accountable and refocus the mission of the church on the needs of the poor, the marginalized, and the lost. So the Pope-of-hope is under heavy expectation and scrutiny right out of the gate.

Though I am not Catholic I wish Pope Francis I well because he is in a position that could do a world of good for many needy people. He’s in a position that could move the church toward compassion, accountability, and justice in the priest sex scandals. He could rework the Vatican’s financial fiascos toward some transparency and accountability. He is in a position of leadership.

If the Pope’s actions on these “small matters” are indeed evidence of a humble heart, as opposed to Mr. Carter’s imagery, than there’s genuine hope the Pope’s eventual actions on “large matters” will point in the right, and righteous, direction.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 15 March 2013

Media coverage of Carnival Cruise Line’s cruise ship problems has been extensive.

This week, it’s Carnival Legend, which developed sailing speed technical problems. Within the last month, it was Carnival Dream with lost power and stopped toilets and Carnival Elation with steering system breakdowns. Worse, Carnival Triumph, a 4-turned-8-day cruise in the Gulf of Mexico, garnered wall-to-wall coverage as 4200 passengers were slowly tugged and towed to Alabama. They reputedly endured stopped toilets, sewage on floors and walls, low-to-no-to-bad food, stuffy stinky staterooms, and a lot more. But they came ashore alive and relatively well.

Far worse, January 13, 2012, Costa Concordia ran aground at Isla dl Giglio, Tuscany, Italy with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew aboard. Some 32 people died, 2 are still missing and presumed dead, and 64 more were injured. Costa Concordia is owned by Costa Cruise, which is in turn controlled by, you guessed it, Carnival Corporation.

Certainly the Costa Concordia disaster was a catastrophe in the sense that people lost their lives and others were hurt. What’s most disturbing about this episode is that it all seems, even now after months of investigation, so unnecessary. In my estimation, Captain Francesco Schettino is guilty of criminal negligence, dereliction of duty, and an assortment of other crimes rooted in his incredibly unprofessional and inept leadership, or I should say the lack thereof. His actions and inactions contributed to if not caused the grounding. On top of that, he abandoned his ship. He and other top crew members are facing indictments, trials, and possible prison terms.

Aside, though, from the clearly tragic Costa Concordia incident, the rest of Carnival Cruise’s problems should be characterized more as corporate managerial challenges than as bona fide catastrophes. Yet media dutifully portray each cruise ship incident as unbearable pain for the passengers.

With due respect to the older folks caught in these ship snafus and with due concern for children who might have been scared, Carnival’s cruse ship problems are not that significant. Certainly not the end-of-the-world scenarios played out in media. People were discomforted and annoyed, but they still had something to eat, were not in life-threatening situations, and were soon headed home.

Put these cruise “catastrophes” alongside a host of other more dangerous situations around the world and they just don’t measure up.

People are living in the midst of civil war (Syria), in refugee camps (Lebanon), under oppressive dictatorships (North Korea), and in impoverished environments (Haiti). These people are suffering. These circumstances, not cruise ships with broken generators, rank as human catastrophes worthy of media attention.

So let us continue our concern and care for the people harmed by Costa Concordia, and let us keep the rest of the incidents in perspective.